


Another Night

by Deannie



Series: Young Mister Ryan and His Undercover Cousin [7]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 09:52:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19743262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: “No reason to go anywhere,” came an affable rumble, the Mexicali lilt straight out of East LA.Fabulous,Eamon thought to himself, trying to find the energy to raise his head again as he recognized the voice.And here I thought the day couldn’t get any worse.





	Another Night

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of the Young Mister Ryan universe, but Young Mister Ryan does not appear. I found it in my files and realized I'd never posted it. Just a day in the life of the poor Undercover Cousin.

On the second floor of a darkened meat packing plant just south of Pueblo, Colorado, far too late at night, Eamon Strauss was in a world of hurt. And he still wasn’t quite sure what had happened.

He’d been working for Frank Jameson for the last couple of months and things had been going pretty well. Jameson was a low level gun runner, but the southwest was a great market for guns and automatics, and Frank was making a name for himself.

Eamon was tied up and lying on the freezing cement in the center of the room, aching in places he’d forgotten he had, thanks to a long hour of questions and blows from his captors—men he’d been partners with until a mysterious phone call had ruined his night.

He wondered who was on the other end of the line. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the guys he was working with these days—he did, which was sort of a new experience for him. But someone had made the call. Someone with enough knowledge to screw him over but good.

Might screw him out of the rest of his life the way these boys were going. They were lackeys—not even smart lackeys—and _he’d_ been sent along by the boss to keep them in line and meet their new business associate. That was going to go well, what with him trussed up on the floor and all.

The men who had been working him over were getting more nervous by the minute.

“What do the feds know, you son of a bitch?” Randall Parker asked, delivering another blow to Eamon’s kidney. Eamon was pretty sure the poor organ wasn’t going to take much more abuse, but his mouth ran away with him anyway.

“I don’t know, Randy,” he gritted out, his flat midwestern accent blunted by the blows he’d already taken to the jaw. “Whatever the hell you told them, I guess.”

“Stupid fucker—” John Marks kicked him hard enough to blank out his hearing for a minute. When the ringing dropped to a dull roar, Eamon tried not to smile at the panic in his captors’ voices.

“—do, John? Gutierrez’s advance man is gonna be here any minute and this _fed_ is gonna ruin both our gigs! He’s after us and Gutierrez’s operation, the guy said!” 

Eamon raised his aching head and watched Randy run a shaking hand through his hair. Randy had good cause to be worried. Jorge Gutierrez was a big time weapons trafficker, based in LA. He was serious shit, as one of Eamon’s friends would say. If he found out they had a federal agent in their operation, they were all dead meat.

Of course, there was just one problem with that.

“I told you, I’m not a fed.” They hadn’t listened to him the last five times he’d said it, but he thought it bore repeating. “I don’t know who the hell told you I was, but, damn it, Harry Mac vouched for me. Ain’t that enough?”

Randy bent at the waist to get right into Eamon’s face. “Well the guy who told us you was FBI is bigger than some two-bit skimmer from Chicago.”

_FBI, huh?_

Big words from Randall Parker, but his eyes were wide with worry and Eamon fought not to grin. Never leave a couple of lackeys to deal with a big meet. It never ended well.

A car’s engine broke the silence.

“Shit, he’s here,” John whispered. “All right, fuck it.” He walked over to where Eamon lay tied and grabbed a rag off the floor. Eamon balked—the damn thing smelled of rotten meat—but Randy held him from behind while the rag was jammed in his mouth, another one twisted and tied around him to keep it in place. A sharp blow to Eamon’s forehead had his head rocking back then forward, and he let it lie, cheek against the floor while he recovered.

“You stay up here with that asshole,” John demanded of his partner. “Shoot him if he looks at you funny—”

“Shoot a fed?”

“You’re gonna fucking get sent to jail forever if he gets back to his people anyway!” John hissed angrily. “Just keep him here and I’ll go downstairs and meet—”

“No reason to go anywhere,” came an affable rumble, the Mexicali lilt straight out of East LA. 

_Fabulous,_ Eamon thought to himself, trying to find the energy to raise his head again as he recognized the voice. _And here I thought the day couldn’t get any worse._

John fumbled for words as nearly silent footfalls approached the three men. “Mr., uh, Mr. Garcia,” he simpered. “I was gonna come down and greet you properly—”

Garcia walked closer, and Eamon could see his feet. Cowboy boots. Alligator skin, dyed black, square-toed. Jesus, the man still had no style. A boot nudged his own leather loafer. “Who are you playing with?” he asked lightly, crouching down and reaching out almost gently to lift Eamon’s head for him. Eamon’s light green eyes met darker green, and the anger in those orbs wasn’t nearly as off-putting as it should have been. “God damn, no way!” Eamon’s cheek hit the cement with a soft thump and Garcia stepped back. He was a bear of a man, skin darkened by the sun as much as by his Mexican heritage. He looked like he could snap you in half as soon as shake your hand. “What the hell is he doing here?”

“You know this fed?” Randy blurted out. Eamon almost rolled his aching eyes as John smacked his partner in the ribs. So much for not letting Gutierrez’s advance man know you had a fox in the hen house.

“Fed?” Garcia asked, disgusted and amused all at once. “Not unless they’re hiring murdering assholes these days.” Eamon didn’t cringe as the huge man stepped forward, ripping the gag from his mouth. “You remember me, Sondam?”

Eamon’s midwestern accent abruptly took on a breezier, western drawl as the bear of a man hauled him into a chair to get a better look at him. “It’s hard to forget your breath, Garcia,” he gritted around his swollen jaw.

“Wait, Sondam?” John was a couple of steps behind. As usual. “He said his name was Strauss.”

Garcia looked positively feral as he surveyed the man in the chair. Trussed up and beaten, Eamon figured he looked pretty pathetic, but he radiated the air of a man who would hold his own in a fight, if given his freedom. 

“Evan Sondam,” Garcia growled. “God damn muscle from West Texas.” He got back up in Eamon’s face. “Him and his pals? Beat a friend of mine to death with a couple of fucking baseball bats.” He patted Eamon’s face. “I been waiting for a chance like this, Sondam,” he whispered, grinning. “Way I see it, you owe me.”

Eamon shook his head, though he knew it was true. “Don’t think I’m paying up any time soon.” 

“So… he’s not a fed?” Randy whispered quietly.

Garcia looked over at him, then back at Eamon, derision in his gaze. “Nah, not that _serpiente limosa_.”

“Serpenty-what?” John asked. Randy looked equally clueless.

Jesus, they really were dumb as bricks, the both of them. At this point, Eamon would take getting killed by a real gun dealer over them. It would be embarrassing to be done in by these idiots. He looked up at Garcia and his heart sank at the shine of triumph in the man’s eyes. If he survived this, he was never going to live it down.

“Jesus, doesn’t anybody speak Spanish anymore?” Garcia spat.

“This is America—” John began, only to be rounded on and silenced by Garcia’s anger. 

“Screw Sondam,” Garcia said sharply. “We have better things to do. My boss wants to know if you all are ready for this or not, and I’m leaning toward calling him now and telling him you’re a load of useless idiots.”

John shook his head. “No, man, no,” he groveled. “Look, our boss knows his shit, all right. He’s ready to take possession at the…” He stopped and looked at Eamon. “Should we be talking about this in front of him?” he asked nervously.

The smile Garcia turned on Eamon actually started the tied man sweating. “It don’t matter, man,” Garcia said softly. “Soon as we’re done here, I’m gonna tear him into pieces. Scatter him in the dog food.”

John turned a little green and Eamon swallowed hard. Garcia could be terrifying, he remembered all too clearly. And merciless. _This has just not been my day,_ he thought to himself.

Garcia blinked, seemingly oblivious to the terror he’d raised in the room. “I gotta call our local guy,” he said. He pulled out his phone and cursed heavily. “Fuckin’ Apple. Batteries are for shit.” He saw a sleek black Galaxy on the desk in the corner and smirked, throwing Eamon a sly look. “That’s yours, huh?”

Eamon shook his head lightly. “You’ve never been shy about taking people’s things before, Garcia. You telling me you’re gonna ask?”

“Shit, no,” Garcia agreed, scooping the phone up and tapping the screen. He shoved it in Eamon’s face. “Password?”

Eamon glared. 

Garcia smacked him lightly in the head. “You know what I can do, vato. Give me the secret code, yeah? Maybe I help you out—make sure it’s all over quick.”

“8473,” Eamon muttered.

Garcia tapped at the phone, and looked at Eamon and smiled. “You two mess up my present while I’m gone and there’ll be more dog food around here than they know what to do with, comprende?”

Randy let out a shaky breath as Garcia walked down the hall, and started talking to someone on Eamon’s “borrowed” phone. His Spanish was rapid-fire and Eamon’s ears were ringing too much to really hear what he was saying.

“I told you two I wasn’t a fed,” he said quietly, his smile back in place, if only for the moment. “Boss is gonna be pissed as hell at you.”

Randy shook his head. “Shit, John, what are we gonna do?”

John pulled Randy over to the corner, and the two men started whispering. Eamon tested his bonds again, but he’d long-since found that the two thugs were better at tying knots than strategizing. At least he was up and in a chair now. One thing he could thank Garcia for.

After a few moments, Randy slipped through the side door into the adjoining room.

“Where’s he going?” Eamon wanted to know. He had a bad feeling about this. Well, a worse one, anyway.

“Look, just shut the fuck up, Strauss—”

“Sondam, actually,” Eamon corrected.

John darted forward and punched him in the face, hard. “I said shut up!” 

“Ah ah ah!” Eamon wheezed, feeling the blood start to drip out of his nose. “Remember, don’t touch the merchandise—”

“Who says the boss is going to let Garcia—”

“I wasn’t planning on asking,” Garcia murmured from the doorway. Eamon looked up as John whirled around to find a gun pointed casually at his midsection. “Tell your boss my men will meet him at the old amusement park at 4am.” He walked toward Eamon and pulled a knife from his jacket, all but ignoring John now. “I’m going to go see about some dog food, now.”

“You can tell Jameson yourself,” John said proudly as Garcia reached behind Eamon and bent to slice him free. “Randy just went to call him.”

Eamon watched Garcia’s eyes close for a moment. When they opened, the green hardened to jade.

“I don’t know that I got time to wait, man,” Garcia said, turning away from the chair. His knife was gone from his hand, though Eamon still appeared to be tied. 

John never noticed the sleight of hand, preening himself for doing his boss proud. “He’ll be here in a few minutes,” he said smugly. “His office is just down the street.”

Maybe ten minutes, but close enough. Eamon could only hope certain other players in this game were where he’d been told they’d be, and that that phone call of Garcia’s meant what he thought it did. Garcia turned back to him and gave him a broad wolfish smile. 

And a wink.

Eamon sliced through the bonds on his wrists and readied himself to move.

“I can wait a little longer, I guess,” Garcia conceded, moving to lean against the wall by the window and fiddle with one of this guns. He looked around curiously. “What the Hell you doing set up in a dog food factory anyway?”

*******

Vin Tanner tightened the zip tie on Jameson’s guard and hauled him away from the main floor of the dog food plant. He’d thought tonight was going to be a simple surveil and contact. Their new undercover man, Ezra Standish, had been working Jameson for weeks. He’d proved himself damn good at his job in the three months since that disastrous bust that had nearly done them all in when he’d first joined the team. 

Vin didn’t know if all the guys realized that Standish had bolted in the middle of it and come back, but from Buck’s responses to the southerner in the days after, he was betting at least some of them did. He himself just figured that a man who looked as chagrined and downright haunted as Ezra had when he reappeared and saved their bacon had to be a guy who ran for a reason. 

And came back for an even better one.

Tonight was supposed to be a big one, but it wasn’t supposed to involve anyone but Ezra. Jameson and his ten-man operation had somehow gained the attention of a high-powered LA gun runner, and Ezra’s piddling bust had the potential to go prime time pretty damn fast. Of course it also had the potential to go bad pretty fast, too, which it obviously had.

“Vin get to the shadows,” Buck murmured over the radio. “We have four vehicles coming in.” He cursed. “Screw this. I’m calling in the cavalry.”

“Gotcha,” Vin replied, looking for a good perch. He felt undressed without his rifle, but there’d been no reason to bring it. He and Buck were just staking out Ezra’s meet and greet. They’d seen Gutierrez’s man drive in a while back and Vin remembered thinking he and Josiah would be a pretty fair fight if it ever came to that. Guy was huge, but he moved lightly. And Vin wondered whether he might be the one who had called him on his private cellphone.

“ _Your man’s been made,_ ” the man on the phone had said in Spanish, fast as lightning and with just as much energy. “ _I’ll try to get him out, but it’ll help if your guys try to even the odds._ ”

Man, what the hell had gone wrong?

“They’re on their way,” Buck whispered as Vin found a stack of boxes to climb, looking down into the main floor of the packing plant to see six man step out of the various cars and SUVs. “ETA eight minutes.”

Vin shook his head. _Let’s hope that’s soon enough._

“What the hell do those two morons think they’re doing!?” Jameson was asking, loudly. His gravelly voice bounced off the cement walls and floor and silent machinery. “I want a few minutes with Eamon. Alone.” Vin didn’t like the violence in the man’s words. “If that son of a bitch has been taking me for a ride, I’ll fucking kill him.”

 _Not if I have anything to say about it_ , Vin promised silently.

“Vin, what’s the situation in there?” Buck was getting antsy. 

Vin slid down from his perch and skirted the assembly lines, keeping to the shadows as he followed Jameson and his entourage. 

“Vin?”

“Give me a minute,” Vin murmured finally. “Jameson is heading upstairs. I’m following.”

“Where the Hell—”

“And I can’t hear a goddamn word he’s saying with you yapping. So hush.”

Buck huffed over the line, but stayed silent. Vin scaled a maintenance ladder carefully, reaching the deep shadows of the second floor catwalk as Jameson and his men clambered up the stairs at the other end. He watched all but two of them enter a lit office. The two remaining men stood guard.

 _Damn it_.

“Parker, what the fuck is going on?” Jameson roared. 

A smooth voice—the same voice Vin had heard over the phone—answered him. “Looks like your man here got some bad information.” 

The chuckle that followed was a little too evil, and Vin looked around for a way to get to higher ground. The maintenance ladder went up another floor, and he started climbing again, silent as a cat. 

“Mr. Garcia, I presume?” Jameson replied, clearly trying to be a little calmer. “What do you know about this?”

“This?” Garcia snorted. “I don’t know anything. I do know that Sondam here is gonna pay me back for a little trouble we had. Isn’t that right, Sondam?”

 _Sondam?_ Vin crawled along the roof of the second floor offices, hoping for a vent, something—anything to give him a look at the place.

“Payback is never quite what you imagine, Mr. Garcia.” Ezra sounded more like Buck than the Ohio heavy he’d been pretending to be for this case, and Vin cursed as quietly as he could.

“What?!” Buck hissed over the earpiece.

“Looks like Garcia might’ve known Ezra from another gig,” Vin replied as quietly as he could. “He’s definitely the guy who called, though.”

“Shit, what?” Buck muttered a few more choice words. “Damn it. Okay, the team’s here. How are we playing this?”

Vin spied a vent leaking light up from the office below and thanked his lucky stars as he got a clear view of Ezra. He didn’t look so good.

Jameson walked up to him, anger making the veins pop in his neck. “It appears, Eamon, that you’ve been telling me stories.”

Ezra’s head came up and though Vin couldn’t see his face from this angle, he knew the shit-eating grin the undercover man was probably wearing. 

“Come on, Frank. Didn’t you say once that every man’s life is just a load of stories anyway?” he asked, mocking his boss.

That boss smacked him hard enough to knock him off the chair. “Son of a bitch!” He drew his gun, and Vin did the same, trying to pry up the vent to get a clear shot.

“Guys, move in!” he whispered, knowing they wouldn’t be in time. Why the fuck wouldn’t the vent _open_!?

“Drop it, or I drop you.” Garcia’s words fell like hammers into the room, and Vin froze, watching the LA gunrunner hold one pistol on Jameson, another—magically conjured from somewhere on him—pointed at Ezra, who looked like he was trying to get his wits about him. “He owes me blood,” Garcia continued. “And if anyone is going to take it from him, it’s me.”

Vin felt the vent cover pop free at the same moment that he heard an almost silent footfall on the stairs to the second floor.

“ATF!”

Chris’s call triggered chaos.

Garcia let out a yell, and three guns went off at once. 

Vin jumped through the open vent, barely noticing that Jameson had fallen from one of Garcia’s shots. His attention and horror were focused on the way had Ezra jerked hard as the second gun discharged into his midsection. Garcia was suddenly down as well, which explained the third gunshot. 

“FREEZE!” Buck bellowed into the ensuing silence. Whether it was the anger in his voice or the sight of their boss with a bullet in his brain, Jameson’s lackeys all did as they were told, pistols hitting the floor and hands in the air. Vin knelt down next to Ezra, almost afraid to check him.

Chris’s teeth were grinding. Vin couldn’t see it, but he could tell. “Get them out of here,” Larabee ordered. “And call an ambulance.”

Vin heard the men being cuffed and led away. There was a splatter of blood across Ezra’s very still, very white face.

“Jameson’s dead,” Chris murmured in the background. His footsteps came closer. “How’s Ezra?”

 _Time to bite the bullet_. Vin reached out a hand to Ezra’s neck as the ruckus of the arrests faded onto the ground floor.

“I hate that ruse,” Ezra said, quite clearly, as Vin’s fingers found a steady but rapid pulse. 

“I think I hate it more, _primo_.” 

Vin spun to see Garcia roll over, a grunt of pain accompanying him.

Ezra sat up stiffly, looking over at the gunrunner with more concern that he should have been showing. No gush of blood. No holes he wasn’t born with.

“I don’t recall actually getting shot being part of it, Jimmy,” Ezra said, a groan letting loose from him as he tried to rise. "Blanks are blanks for a reason."

“Well, the bad guys don't use blanks. Game don’t always go how you want it,” Garcia replied. He _was_ bleeding, though it wasn’t gushing. His hand was clamped over a gunshot wound in his shoulder, but he was grinning a shit-eating grin that made Vin swear, for just a second, that he was looking at Ezra.

“What the hell is going on?” Vin finally got out.

Ezra smirked at his confusion, looking around the room and seeing they were alone. 

“Mr. Tanner, Mr. Larabee. May I present James Hernandez, of the DEA.” He hauled himself up finally and slouched into the chair in the center of the room, straightening immediately with a his of pain.

“What does the DEA have to do with this?” Chris growled. He did hate to be out of the loop, their leader.

Garcia—Hernandez, whatever—sighed. “Nothing. Gutierrez runs drugs as much as guns. I’ve been under with his organization for almost a year.” He looked like he wasn’t going to be able to get up on his own. A siren whined in the night, coming closer. “Whole damn thing’s blown now, though, I guess.”

“You did say I owed you,” Ezra murmured. He needed an ambulance himself, looked like. 

“Hey, I did _not_ blow your cover in New Orleans,” Hernandez griped. “Saved your ass that time, too, though.”

“My ass didn’t need saving—then or now.” Ezra’s eyes closed in pain.

“Says you,” Hernandez fired back.

“I am not having this argument again, dear cousin,” Ezra replied. “I believe I made it perfectly clear—”

“You never make anything perfectly clear. It’s… It’s, like, your _job_ to _not_ make things perfectly clear.”

Jesus, they fought like Buck and JD!

“Does anybody know you’re DEA?” Chris asked, cutting through the bitchfest.

Boots were clanging up the stairs.

Hernandez blinked. “No, but—”

“EMTs are here,” Nathan called from the catwalk. “Is Ezra—?” He stopped in the doorway when he saw the four of them and the dead body in the corner.

Chris grinned rudely at their undercover man. “Ezra didn’t make it,” he proclaimed. “We need a couple of body bags.” He looked at Hernandez and nodded. No matter what Ezra said, the guy really had saved his ass. “And an armed transport for the injured gunrunner.”

“Yeah,” Hernandez agreed, relief coloring his voice. He lowered himself to the floor again as a couple of the EMTs approached. “I’m a dangerous man.”

“So says the entire female population of Los Angeles,” Ezra agreed.

“Fuck you, _primo_.”

Vin stood up, watching Nathan take charge of Ezra. Chris had a bemused look on his face, but Vin just grinned. 

“Family, huh?” Vin said softly.

Chris snorted. “I swear, I thought he was raised by wolves.”

*********

Ezra tried and failed to find a comfortable position in the surprisingly well-padded lounger that sat in the corner of Jimmy’s hospital room. It wasn’t the furniture’s fault, he just couldn’t move without some part of his body protesting.

_“Well the guy who told us you was FBI is bigger than some two-bit skimmer from Chicago.”_

_FBI_. God, it was an albatross around his neck, wasn’t it? Paranoia aside, he was insanely careful about his covers. There was no reason that anyone would peg him as FBI. He almost never took part in a raid when he’d been the undercover man. He would arrange to be arrested, or—as he had last night—die in the takedown, thereby removing himself from suspicion. 

“ _The guy who told us you was FBI...”_

There were a number of people who could be that guy. God knew Ezra hadn’t done himself any favors when he was accused of that fiasco with Fallon. He didn’t have a lot of friends, but Lord, did he have a lot of enemies. On both sides of the law.

He shifted again, trying to take the pressure off of his hip. He could swear Parker had left a boot mark there.

“You’re keeping me awake, man,” Jimmy murmured, still very much half asleep. “Quit it.”

“You could sleep through an earthquake,” Ezra reminded him. But it was good to see his cousin awake. The bullet hadn’t done much damage, but blood loss and trauma took their toll. Three hours in the ER and five more hours in his regular room, and Jimmy was only just coming to himself. They would transfer him up to Denver tomorrow morning, and Ezra would go with him.

“I have,” Jimmy agreed sleepily. “A lot of them.”

“One very good reason why I never made it to San Francisco,” Ezra replied, letting the room lapse into silence again. His mind was still mulling over the bust.

“I like your boss,” Jimmy suddenly said, breaking the quiet a few minutes later. “He seems like a hardass.”

Ezra chuckled. “An accurate observation.”

“He rode the ambulance with me.”

“Well, you _are_ a dangerous guy,” Ezra noted with amusement. “I doubt he trusts anyone else to watch you.”

"Wanted to know if I knew how your cover could have been blown," Jimmy continued. "He was pretty damn pissed about it."

"No doubt," Ezra murmured, worried by the statement.

"Said you were a damn good agent. Didn't want to see you taken down like that on his watch."

Well, now, Ezra didn't know _what_ to say to that. Silence reigned for a long moment.

“Do you trust him?” 

Jimmy’s question unaccountably made sweat burst on Ezra’s brow. The answer was complicated. And frighteningly simple.

“I do.”

Jimmy grinned broadly. “‘Bout damn time. You were wasting yourself with the Bureau, you know? Bunch of assholes in suits.”

Ezra smirked at that. Jimmy wasn’t wrong.

“A good suit is a solid investment, dear cousin.” Ezra sniffed judgingly. “Not that you’d know from experience.”

“Only thing I need is a bullet-proof vest.” Jimmy’s body was succumbing to exhaustion again, and Ezra settled back, then shifted again in pain. 

“It would certainly have helped in this instance,” Ezra agreed softly, as his cousin started to fade back toward sleep.

Of course, being Jimmy, he had one parting shot. "Maybe you fit in better with these guys. Seem to have their heads on straight."

They did, Ezra agreed, as Jimmy let out a soft snore. It was funny, even before Jimmy had walked in the door, Ezra had had a feeling he actually _had_ backup this time. It was a new feeling. Maybe he would fit in here.

At least he could try, he supposed.

*********

It was near the end of the day, the next day, before Chris could discuss the operation with his undercover man.

“Any idea who could have dropped the dime on you?” he asked finally, after they'd hashed out the night before and discussed Ezra's evidence against the crew.

Chris was watching closely, so he clearly saw the moment of panic in Ezra’s eyes. Like anything he said wouldn’t be believed.

“Parker clearly said he knew I was FBI,” Ezra finally allowed, rubbing absently at the bandage that covered a slice on his arm. He’d been pretty well worked over by Jameson’s lackeys, but he hadn’t even been admitted to the hospital. Of course he’d spent the night there anyway, in the guarded room of a presumed felon. 

Chris had contacted Hernandez’s superior at the DEA in LA, to let her know he was recovering in a Denver hospital, still under guard, and would be transferred out to the coast in a few days. They arranged things to keep his cover with Gutierrez—a short stay in the medical center at the LA county jail and some "insufficient evidence" to get him back under cover. The poor woman had that combination of pissed and relieved in her voice that Chris knew too well. 

Nice to know he wasn’t the only one.

“It’s possible someone recognized you from an older bust,” Chris offered. 

“It’s possible.” 

Ezra didn’t believe it, but Chris would have trust issues too, if he were him. For a guy who loved to gamble, Standish had been dealt a shit hand of cards too many times.

“How’s your cousin?” he asked, changing the subject. The bust gone bad wasn’t something they could fix. Ezra’s cover was dead and so was Jameson; the bad guys were in the system awaiting trial.… Chris had to hope that was the end of it for now. 

“Recovering nicely,” Ezra allowed. He grinned. “Another scar to show off to his ladies.”

Buck’s head appeared in the doorway. “Well now, you can never have too many of those,” he offered with an easy smile. He pegged Ezra with a measuring gaze. “I was going to ask if you boys wanted to go to the saloon for a drink, but I don’t know if I want to be seen with a brawler like you, Ezra.”

Chris gave his friend a raised eyebrow. Ezra didn’t drink with them. Ever, really. Vin kept trying, but it was new for Buck to get in on the act. Buck just shrugged at him as if to say, "He's got to warm to us eventually."

“Actually,” Ezra said, hauling himself to his feet and surprising both his colleagues. “I believe a drink would be just the thing.” He gave Buck a bored look. “So long as you will refrain from deviling poor Miss Recillios.”

Buck shook off his surprise and grinned big. “Hell, that ain’t deviling, Ezra. That’s called softening her up.” He struck a ridiculous pose. “She’s warming to me.”

“Uh huh,” Chris offered, rising from his own chair and heading out the door. “I’ll believe that when I see it.” 

“Stranger things have happened,” Buck protested.

Chris glanced back to see Ezra following, mixing with the rest of the boys as they headed out into the Colorado evening. Like one of the family. Finally.

“They have, Buck,” he agreed. 

Vin caught his eye and smirked.

_Family, huh?_

**********

The End


End file.
